Neal's Home Remodeling and Design Blog

Adding quirky or unexpected elements to interior spaces is one easy way to bring interest and character into your home. One option that suits homes in the Greater Cincinnati area well is the use of barn-style doors. There are a variety of interior barn door ideas and installations that can be used throughout your home.

A trend captivating homeowners this year is integrated interior cabinet lighting. While in-cabinet lighting isn't new, it used to take special electrical work (with the added cost) to install, and therefore hasn't been on the radar of most homeowners until recent years. Now, cabinet makers are designing with interior lighting in mind from the start. With this advancement, the benefits of integrated lighting make it something worth considering for the modern remodel.

Sometimes the best way to appreciate the impact of a remodel is to compare the before and after photos. We enjoy taking a look back at the transformations we've made to kitchens throughout the Greater Cincinnati area. Here are five of our favorite before & after kitchens that we hope you'll enjoy as well.

As kitchen design professionals, each year we assess the recent trends in the Cincinnati area kitchens we created, and take note of what looks to have some staying power into the next several months. This year, we see a continuation of many of the design trends we've been seeing, as well as a few new trends that reflect the modern sensibilities of today's homeowners. We've selected the top five we expect to continue seeing this year.

The bathroom vanity is an important element in the design of a bathroom. The style, scale, placement, size, and storage of the vanity in your bathroom are all key to the room's function and feel. In many cases, the vanity is a crucial visual focal point, and may even be the only thing really making your bathroom unique or interesting. With so much resting on the vanity, it deserves a good amount of thought and planning in any bathroom remodel. Here are some bathroom vanity ideas to consider when designing a bathroom vanity.

Every year, we get the excitement of discovering various "color of the year" choices from just about every corner of the color world. Pantone, the world's leading color expert, has selected the rich and vibrant Ultra Violet as the color for 2018. While there's a lot that goes into the color choice, by looking at current trends and making statements about the state of things possibly to come, Color of the Year choices are meant primarily to inspire and inform choices in decor, fashion, advertising, and the visual world around us. This doesn't always translate to the best color choice for your home, however. That's where the paint companies come in.

As the year begins drawing to a close, it's good to take stock of where we've been. For our part, we'd like to take a moment to look at the 5 most popular design blogs in 2017. In your journeys to remodel your home you found these kitchen, bath and outdoor living design blogs relevant.

Any home remodeling project begins with ideas. Before you sit down with a contractor or designer it helps to have some idea of what you want to do. There was a time when you could put together a list and some simple rough sketches to initiate a meeting with a building professional, but today there is a wealth of information available to use in your planning process to more clearly define your objectives and plan a budget. Here are three ways to collect and organize remodeling design ideas for your project:

As we head into the coldest months of the year, now is a good time to take care of the last-minute maintenance tasks that will help ensure that your home is prepared for all that winter has in store for it. The biggest priority for your home is to make sure that you don't find yourself needing to handle major repairs or problems when the weather is at its worst. Keep reading for a winter home maintenance checklist of what to look into.

Time and again we see that the kitchen is the heart of the home. So as we near the holiday party season, you may be looking at your kitchen and wondering how it can work better when you're the host. Entertaining comes with its own set of challenges and needs, and if you have guests over often, it may be worth while to adjust the form and function of your kitchen to account for a crowd rather than simply for your immediate family. The seven ideas below are some great things to consider to make your kitchen holiday party ready.